For the locals who live on Christmas Island, the politics of refugees arriving by boat was never front of mind. These islanders are well aware of the dangers of the sea. Their primary concern was for the welfare of the desperate people who felt they had no option but to try to board a rickety boat, hoping for a better life. Coralie lives on Christmas Island with her mum and dad. Her mum studies the local bats, pipistrelles, and despairs that their population is declining. Her dad runs a diving business, whose profits are also declining.

Coralie is 13 and is passionate about the nature on the island – its pipistrelles, of course, but also the seabirds and crabs. Smith cleverly moulds her imagery around the island’s natural world. The ocean surrounding the island is influenced by the moon, and Smith divides her novel’s parts into lunar phases. The greatest challenge the island faces comes when a fishing boat overloaded with asylum seekers crashes against the cliffs. Coralie locks eyes with Ali, a young Iranian boy, and sees him pulled under the waves with his mother. She is determined to find him; she is determined that he will not have drowned.

Smith uses the tragic loss of life on the Janga, a dangerously overloaded fishing boat that was smashed against the rocks of Christmas Island in 2010 as her springboard into this stunning narrative about loss, grief and the hope that drives people to undertake such a treacherous journey. She pulls no punches, describing in detail the horror of the disaster.

The Pull of the Moon sometimes isn’t easy reading, but it’s essential if we’re to better understand the lives of those seeking asylum.

Pip Smith is the author of the YA novel The Pull of the Moon (UWAP, 2025) the children’s picture books Theodore the Unsure, and To Greenland! (Scholastic Press, 2019; 2022), the novel Half Wild (A&U, 2017) and poetry collection Too Close for Comfort (SUP, 2013).

Writer, reviewer, mother, teacher and manager of the Faber Writing Academy by day. Singer and strummer of guitars in garage band Imperial Broads by night.

Visit the author’s website.